Day 5: Full Day at the 'Stone

Yellowstone is not really a place that you can see in two and a half days. To do it justice, you would probably have to spend at least a week there. But on this vacation, we don't have a week to dedicate solely to Yellowstone, so we did it in two and a half days. Day 5 was our first full day there and we certainly did a lot.

We began the day at the Running Bear Pancake House in West Yellowstone. I thought the food was great and I think that my family would agree. As one of the reviews on Trip Advisor said, it has "good food and good people." It definitely does. (on a side note, I'm not sure if child labor laws are enforced in Montana, because two guys working at the restaurant looked like they were about eleven or twelve years old).

After breakfast, we went straight into the park. Our first stop was at a place called Artists Paint Pots which was a collection of geysers with different colored stuff inside of them (hence the name, paint pots). Unfortunately, you'll just have to look at the link for pictures, because I did not take any. When I saw the sign for Artists Paint Pots, I thought we were actually going to an art exhibit so I did not bring my camera. When we finished the loop of the geysers, I asked my mom where the art exhibit was.

We faced many road work delays getting to our next stop, Liberty Rock and Mammoth Springs.

By the time we got there, a huge storm had moved over us. On our walk up to Mammoth Springs, a Park Ranger shouted that everyone needed to get off the path and get under some shelter. As we headed back to our car, we overheard a couple asking the same Ranger who had just been yelling for everyone to leave to take their picture next to the Springs, which they were walking up to go see.
We waited out the thunderstorm in the safety of our car and we soon realized that we were one of the few families doing that. Everyone was still outside walking around, even though lightning was striking less than five miles away. We even saw one family eating on a metal picnic table under three enormous trees. Everyone's having a good time.

When the storm ended, we went inside another Visitor's Center near Mammoth Springs. This one had another film about the Park that only my dad and I went to see. After a pretty good start to the film featuring some great historical footage of the early days of the Park, the movie quickly turned (once again) into a propaganda piece. This time, it was for America. For whatever reason, shots of Yellowstone faded out to a scene of Thomas Jefferson writing the Declaration of Independence. "We hold these truths to be..." he pauses for a second, as he thinks about the historical words that he is writing "...self-evident." A couple shots of Independence Hall later, my dad turns to me and says, "Let's go."

We walked upstairs to see a cool exhibit of all the animals you can see while you are at Yellowstone. This was probably the closest I would get to a big-horned sheep.

We spent the next few hours driving around the park and stopping to look at the countless gorgeous views of Yellowstone. Here are just a few:


We also took a few funny pictures, like this one of a tree cruhsing me.

It wasn't long before we hit another traffic jam. This jam seemed to be for an animal sighting rather than for road work (there are subtle differences in the two types of traffic jams at Yellowstone). We rolled down our window to ask a lady walking by if there was an animal ahead. "Oh yeah, there's a big ol' grizzly up there!" she told us.

By this point in the trip, we had our animal sighting routine down to a science. My mom pulled out her binoculars and immediately got eyes on the animal. Allison opened the sun roof and stuck her head out so that she could get a full 360 view of the area and keep track of the animal if it moved. Emily and I took out our cameras and got them ready to capture the animal. My dad's main focus was controlling the vehicle and taking turns looking through the binoculars.
We saw the grizzly and watched it as it slowly made its way to the street. We noticed that everyone near the grizzly was more concerned about getting a National Geographic-worthy picture of the grizzly than the were about their own safety. Once they did realize, however, everything they had been reading on all the warning signs around Yellowstone about what to do when a bear approaches you went straight out the window. There was one guy in particular who had been taking pictures of the bear as if the bear was his model in a photo shoot when he realized that he needed to get out of there. Instead of slowly backing up to his car, he took off sprinting in front of the bear, demonstrating to everyone watching what you are not supposed to do when a bear gets near you.
Our next stop was at a viewpoint for the Lower Yellowstone Falls, which we had to hike a little ways to get to. The hike down was pretty easy going down, because we were basically walking down the side of a mountain. The view of the falls was the best view we had seen in the park yet, so the hike straight back up the mountain was well worth it.




There was a quote on a sign near the top of the hike that eloquently described the view. However, we were more interested in his name and what his parents must have been thinking than what Mr. Thomas Thomas was actually saying.
As the day came to a close, we visited one more group of hot springs and geysers before heading back to our Holiday Inn in West Yellowstone.